David A. Riley

David A. Riley

HP Lovecraft was a bigoted piece of shit. He wrote wonderful stories and created a whole genre of cosmic horror/weirdness that has had an invaluable impact upon the genre/horror literature of the 20th-21st Centuries but he was still a bigoted piece of shit. It may well be true that his views were advancing somewhat as he got older but as his life was unfortunately cut short we will never know quite how much his views were changing.

For the vast majority of fans of HPL his personal views are problematic as they simply do not sit well with people living in the 21st Century. HPL is however dead as a doornail. He is, to paraphrase Monty Python, an ex-bigot. Were he alive today I don’t think I would read his work as I wouldn’t feel especially comfortable supporting someone who held such vile opinions of me and my friends -it is for this reason that I have never read Orson Scott Card.

I have, over the last couple of years, made a number of friends -albeit mediated by social media, in the weird fiction community and it seems that the vast majority are of a definite progressive bent. They are leagues ahead of old HPL in their view of the world and the people that inhabit it. Which I found to be really heartening, that people were able to appreciate HPL’s work and to build the weird fiction literary community into an inclusive place of diverse creativity. As China Mieville said: The best thing about the New Weird is we have less fascists. This is most certainly true and it is something to be celebrated.

However there is always going to be someone trying to ruin it for everyone and this time it is the English author and publisher David A. Riley. David A. Riley is an author of horror/weird fiction who is rather well known in the UK genre scene. He is also an unrepentant Neo-Nazi who was at one point the North-West organiser for the National Front -a gang of street fighting boneheads who wish to nail the swastika to the Union flag. They are the lowest of the low. Riley has also stood for election for the National Front on a number of occasions and continues to spout his vile opinions on people of colour on various British National Party (a more successful offshoot of the National Front) web forums. He is also responsible for penning a vile article (link) praising HPL’s racism.

I found Riley’s page on Facebook earlier today and checked to see how many mutual friends I had with him. I only had 13 but that’s 13 too many so far as I’m concerned. All of my mutual friends were American publishers, writers, and editors -with one British exception. I find it highly likely that not one of these people on my friends list had any inclination as to Riley’s fascist affiliations. After all why would non-political people or people from the other side of the Atlantic be aware of someone’s affiliation with a Nazi group in another country? So I made a polite post tagging my mutual friends and within about 10 minutes 13 mutual friends had dropped to 7. That made me happy. A couple of people who saw the post didn’t remove Riley however -that could just be down to not being at a computer and doing shit on Facebook can be really fiddly from a mobile phone. So hopefully it will drop again soon. I’m also assuming that the others simply haven’t seen the post so hopefully they will pick up on this through other friends and will drop him like the swastika draped piece of shit that he is.

There is absolutely no place for the vile hatred of groups like the National Front and individuals like David A.Riley in any civilised society. Especially not when that society is seeing the worst attacks on public services and quality of life since the Second World War. There are people killing themselves because of the poverty they are being forced into by the government and groups like the National Front seek to weaken us farther by setting us against ourselves by peddling their racist hatred into the world.

Great article.
Could you please provide sources for the more recent racist comments of his. It’s appaling enough that Riley ever thought this way, but it’s particularly relevant to see if he’s shown ANY willingness to outgrow such wretched beliefs and, ideally, even come to repent for them.
So, specific dates and sources (besides the 1983 article you share) are necessary for making that assessment.
Regardless of whether Lovecraft was a bigot (which he certainly was), he never ran for office for the Nazi Party in America, or joined a local chapter of the KKK (and that was a very real possibility in Rhode Island when he was alive).

I never even knew who David Riley was, and I live in the UK. Trust me, the national front are viewed with disgust by all but the small number of like minded people in this country. Most people who support them do so in secret.

Aye, I live in the UK too and I know that they’re a minority. It’s just that when they are tolerated it makes the more extreme amongst their number feel that they have views which are acceptable and are then likely to act on those beliefs.

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